In recent years, Web applications operating on a Web browser have being actively studied and developed. The Web application is an application that can be used over a network via the Web browser without installing a program into an information processing apparatus. The Web application has been developed along with a spread of a “cloud computing technique” for providing via the network an information technology (IT) service that has been provided by being incorporated into each client personal computer (PC) to be provided. Some Web applications can provide functions for creating documents and calculating tables.
A method for printing document data edited by the conventional Web application will be described. When a user inputs a print instruction, a Web application converts a document to be processed by the Web application into a portable document format (PDF) data, and transfers the converted data via the network to a client who has activated the Web browser. The Web browser on the information processing apparatus notifies the user of reception of the document data in the PDF format. Subsequently, the user can print the document data in the PDF format using the application in the client. More specifically, when the user gives a print instruction again using the application for processing this PDF data, an image drawing instruction is transmitted to a printer driver in the client. The printer driver converts the image drawing instruction into a page description language (PDL) format that can be interpreted by the printer, and then transmits the PDL data to the printer on the network as a print job.
As described above, to print the document created by the conventional Web application, the user needs to previously install the PDF program or the printer driver into the client.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-216366 discusses a technique in which a plug-in program of the Web browser acquires data to be printed and print setting data from an application server, and then performs printing using the printer driver that has been previously installed in the client.